Most distilleries are stubborn individuals. Christine Ila is an exception though. “If we seriously wanted to change Mortlach could we do it?” she asks. “No, you’d get a corrupted spirit. We always have to keep within the parameters of what the distillery character is.” It’s a polite way of responding to criticisms that the …
Regional categorisation is a vexed issue in whisky: it may be a handy way of grouping distilleries together geographically, but it can be a tricky business identifying a stylistic continuity between all the whiskies in Perthshire or Speyside. But if you can’t claim that there is a “Speyside style,” or isolate certain qualities which …
There was a time you could spot a distillery by the smoke belching from its chimney. Now, most chimneys have been demolished as distilleries have switched from coal to steam. Hughes recalls as a child watching Glen Garioch’s chimneys being demolished brick-by-brick by a Glaswegian steeple jack. “He came up the road, bouncing off …
In the traditional hierarchy of spirits, even the best whiskey was always “substitute standard,” as the Army used to deem things that weren’t what you really wanted but would work if you had to make them work. The spirit you really wanted, presumably, was brandy — French brandy, to be precise, and cognac, to …
Around the new millennium, if you went looking for a bottle of American straight rye whiskey, your chances were lousy. By the end of the 20th century, this foundational style of American whiskey was hanging from the ropes, seeing birdies, and waiting for the towel to hit the canvas. Out of the dozens of …
We all want a top liquor shelf that wows. But without a strong middle shelf of $40-and-under bottles that you can pour without a second thought, you just have a trophy case instead of something you actually live with. Recently, in an effort to get price-conscious younger drinkers away from their White Claw, distillers …
Single malts used to be synonymous with Scotland. But now that scores of distillers are making them in America, it’s time to start sampling the country’s most exciting new bottles. When it comes to brown spirits, single-malt whiskeys have long worn the gilded crown. Doing a celebratory shot of Jim Beam bourbon or Jameson …
Suffer enough hangovers and drinking booze starts to lose some of its appeal quickly. It takes just one overzealous happy hour to make you swear you’ll never put a margarita to your lips again. There are alternatives, of course. You could take a break from drinking. You could drink less. Or you could consider …